Although five Arizona companies are on a secret federal "watch list" of polluters who have not been subject to timely enforcement, the extent of air pollution in the state is clouded by poor record-keeping and bureaucratic miscommunication.

Eight sites statewide are on the watch list, including three construction material plants, a metal fabricator, a cement plant and a printing plant in the Phoenix area, a copper smelter in Miami, and an open-pit mine in Morenci.

Beyond those sites on the Environmental Protection Agency's internal Clean Air Act list, there are 26 Arizona sites designated as high-priority violators by the agency.

But although we seem to have our share of sites among the 383 nationwide that appear on the September watch list, many violations across the state seem more ominous in records than in reality, a TucsonSentinel.com investigation shows.

Of the five Arizona companies on the EPA's internal list, one thought it had convinced the EPA long ago that it was never out of compliance and one fixed its emission problem before the EPA had issued the notice of violation.

Federal databases reveal that most of the 26 Arizona companies listed as high-priority violators have been fined or otherwise sanctioned. Others agreed in court to fix the problems. Some firms are listed because of paperwork errors, such as missed reporting deadlines, and not all high-priority violations are serious. Several are for dust control.

Even so, health and environmental groups maintain that Clean Air Act violations—even administrative ones—are a threat to public health, and two of the polluters identified in EPA data hope to expand.

Secret watch list

The EPA determines HPV status based on numerous criteria, including emissions and administrative compliance, such as reporting and record keeping. The program was launched in 1999 to help the EPA track and reduce violations that either do or could lead to serious air quality problems. The shorter watch list—obtained by the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News and NPR after a Freedom of Information Act request— names hundreds of companies that have not had formal action by the EPA at least nine months after a violation.

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Partnering with local news organizations, including TucsonSentinel.com, iWatch and NPR conducted a nationwide investigation that found the EPA "knows of more than 1,600 'high priority violators' of the Clean Air Act — sites that regulators believe need urgent attention." About a quarter of those sites appear on the watch list, while nearly 300 have been HPVs for over a decade.

Not every facility on the list may be a serious or chronic offender, iWatch reported:

Facilities may appear for other reasons, EPA spokesman Larry Jackson said. For instance, enforcement officials may be tracking a polluter's compliance with a court order. A company in negotiations with authorities might be on the list. In other instances, violations may have been alleged but not proven. There also may be data errors — for example, a state agency's failure to report an enforcement action to the EPA.

The feds refused to disclose the reason each facility appears on the watch list.

Within the bureaucracy, the enforcement lapses are hardly a secret, iWatch reported:

A 2009 report by the EPA's inspector general found that "in many instances EPA and States are not addressing high priority violations … in a timely manner," thereby allowing "continued emissions from facilities [that] may result in significant environmental and public health impacts, deterrence efforts being undermined, and unfair economic benefits being created."

Specifically, the inspector general found that the EPA rarely took over
from the states cases involving high priority violators – even though
some cases had dragged on for a year and a half or more.

Sixteen of Arizona's 26 high-priority violators have been addressed through enforcement action, most with fines ranging from $2,200 up to $1 million. One violation was self-reported and corrected, one was for a permit application error, the data show.

Margot Perez-Sullivan, a spokeswoman for EPA Region 9, which covers Arizona, Nevada, California and Hawaii, declined to comment about how Arizona compares to the nation on compliance or the facts or EPA data available for any individual pollution case.

Arizona air-quality enforcement

But a look at data and interviews with violators show a mixed bag of apparent administrative snafus and unaddressed violations in Arizona.

Arizona Portland Cement Co., which operates a cement plant near Interstate 10 in Marana, is the only Southern Arizona company on the high-priority violator list, though it is not on the shorter watch list.

The company has two recent air-quality violations—and fines to go with them.

TucsonSentinel.com reported on the Clean Air Act watch list with support from the Center for Public Integrity. CPI's iWatch News and NPR partnered with local news organizations to investigate Clean Air Act enforcement.

In 2006, the company paid the state $300,000 to settle a case involving emitting air pollution, failing to submit test reports, and not installing temperature monitors.

In January, the EPA fined Arizona Portland $350,000 for an expansion plan that would have exceeded emissions for particulate matter. The plant was ordered to reduce expected annual emissions by 80,000 pounds by adding $6.7 million of control equipment to the plan.

Although the EPA still lists the company as a high-priority violator, there never was a physical violation and the entire episode was sparked by a math error, said Steve Regis, vice president of engineering for CalPortland, Arizona Portland's parent company.

"Our consultant had an error in his spreadsheet, and we submitted the permit application using his data. We are in compliance. We were always in compliance," Regis said.

The company paid the fine to clear the decks for the expansion when the economy turns around, he said.

Another CalPortland plant, in Mojave, Calif., appears on the national watch list. The company told iWatch that it believes it is "inappropriate" for the plant to be listed.

"We have been working closely with EPA over the last several years to resolve all the agency's issues of concern relating to our permitted plant and we fully expect to complete that resolution to the EPA's satisfaction," the company said.

Another cement plant in Glendale that appears on the watch list, one belonging to CEMEX, shows no compliance issues in the EPA database. State regulators did not immediately respond to a request for information.

A company spokeswoman said "CEMEX is unaware of any outstanding violations that would place this facility on such a list."

"We are committed to environmental stewardship and continue to work closely with regulatory agencies to ensure our operations are in full compliance," said CEMEX's Sara Engdahl.

CEMEX also has applied for a permit to expand. Though the expansion will
not allow the plant to process any more raw material, it will add a
diesel generator to run a machine to crush asphalt for recycling, said
Todd Martin of the Maricopa County Air Quality Department, which will
issue the permit.

The net result would be an increase in nitrogen oxides, Martin said.

Nitrogen oxides are an ingredient in acid rain and contribute to ground-level ozone, a problem that has plagued the Phoenix valley for years, mostly in the summer.

Though a smelter belonging to mining giant Freeport-McMoRan is on the watch list of unaddressed violations, there was never a threat in the first place, said Mark Shaffer, communications director for the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, the lead enforcement agency in a case against the company.

Last November, the EPA issued a notice of violation for the company's smelter in Miami, which melts copper and other metals out of ore, after a May 2010 test revealed the plant was emitting about 15 percent more particulate matter than its permit allowed.

After the failed test, the company adjusted its output and was in compliance by June — four months before the EPA issued a notice of violation, Shaffer said, adding that there was never a threat to the public.

"ADEQ has no evidence that this violation resulted in an exceedance of EPA's health-based standards," he said.

The same was true for a violation at a Freeport-McMoRan mine in Morenci, the company said in a response to iWatch.

But Arizona's smelters have a long history of pollution. From iWatch New's report on the watch list:

In Hayden, Ariz., the federal government forced a century-old copper smelter to excavate the yards of nearly 300 residents because the soil was contaminated with arsenic and lead. Yet the state still allows discharges into the air of the same metals, which can cause cancer and neurological damage. Some citizens believe generations have been — and will continue to be — poisoned. The state views the smelter as only a minor source of hazardous air pollutants.

***

In the late 1990s, several hundred residents of Hayden, Ariz., sued Asarco, owner of one of the nation's few remaining copper smelters, hoping to get enough money to move away from the arsenic- and lead-contaminated town east of Phoenix. The company entered bankruptcy some years later and avoided big payouts. People are stuck, and the pollution continues.

Mary Corona, 53, has lived in Hayden since birth and said she suffers from constant, throbbing pain, as well as frequent bouts of nausea, dizziness and memory loss. She takes 10 prescription medications, including the powerful painkiller Oxycontin. When she was about 5, she began getting welts on her torso that looked like cigarette burns, she said. She remembers seeing thick clouds of dust from the Asarco tailings pile — today, a literal mountain of mining waste. Some neighbors have cancer; others have died. "There were people who could have stopped this years ago," Corona said. "They didn't care."

The extent of pollution from some companies on the watch list was not easily determined without EPA cooperation.

A Phoenix site belonging to Quebecor World, a printing company that merged with World Color in 2008, is on the list for July and September. But neither company is listed in the EPA air compliance database. A call to the company's Phoenix office went unanswered. No Phoenix property was included when World Color was absorbed by a bigger company, Quad/Graphics, last year, a spokeswoman for Quad/Graphics said.

The EPA database contains little information about CMS Steel Fabricators in Mesa. The company, which failed a stack test in 2008 and was fined $2,200, is listed in violation through the past two years apparently for a procedural violation. The firm is on the watch list for unknown reasons and did not respond to a request for an interview.

One company on the watch list insists it is simply a misunderstanding.

Vulcan Materials Co. is listed for dust control violations in Mesa, Phoenix and El Mirage. The EPA visited the sand and gravel operations last summer, and determined they were out of compliance with Clean Air Act particulate matter standards, said Mark Reardon, a company vice president and regional counsel.

But Vulcan had a subsequent meeting with federal regulators at which they showed their interpretation of their compliance data, Reardon said.

"We believe we satisfied them that we were in compliance — we are in compliance — and they took no further action," he said.

Vulcan did not hear from the EPA again, and Reardon was surprised to learn the company is on the watch list for lack of enforcement.

Dioxin, acid rain components among pollutants

Some risks from Clean Air Act violations appear real.

IMSAMET of Arizona, an aluminum recycling company in Goodyear, is on the HPV list but not on the watch list. The company was fined $153,000 last year after the company allowed a release of dioxins, highly toxic compounds that have been linked to cancer.

Though the EPA database does not say what the company did in the wake of the release, IMSAMET is meeting its compliance schedule as of September 2011.

The company did not respond to a request for an interview.

The Coronado Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant in St.
Johns owned by the Salt River Project, is on the high-priority violator
list. While EPA data show the company has been out of compliance for
three years, the plant is not on the watch list.

In 2008, the
company was fined $950,000 for improperly firing burners at the plant.
The EPA ordered the company to install $430 million in upgrades to
remove sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—key ingredients of acid rain.
The new equipment will also reduce other toxic releases.

Air quality near the plant never exceeded EPA standards, and the upgrades are well under way, said SRP spokesman Jeffrey Lane.

"We are about halfway finished with the work," Lane said.

Even minor violations are health risks

Despite the comparatively minor violations in Arizona, any Clean Air Act infraction is a threat to public health, said Christian Stumpf, regional director for government relations for the American Lung Association of the Southwest. He named power plants like Coronado as among the worst threats to air quality.

"Coal-fired power plants are extremely dangerous," he said.

Though dust seems innocuous, it can cause heart attacks, decrease lung function and aggravate asthma, and it has been linked to premature death in people with lung and heart disease, the EPA says.

WildEarth Guardians, a New Mexico-based environmental group with an office in Tucson, recently sued the EPA to designate Tucson and 14 other areas across eight states as "non-attaintment areas" for dust standards. An ambient air monitoring point near Interstate 19 exceeded particulate matter standards from 2008-10, WildEarth Guardians said in the lawsuit.

Taken together, these sources of pollution are a huge threat and the EPA needs to step up, said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians.

"These air quality violations are a sign of out control air pollution. These sources—whether they be coal-fired power plants or dusty roads—need to be reined in," he said.

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CalPortland Cement Co. was fined $350,000 for an error in a plan to expand this cement plant near Interstate 10 and Avra Valley Road.

EPA's secret watch list

About 400 facilities around the country — eight in Arizona — are on an internal EPA “watch list” that includes serious or chronic Clean Air Act violators that have not been subject to timely enforcement. The Center for Public Integrity obtained the list after a Freedom of Information Act request and provided it to TucsonSentinel.com.

The list helps the EPA identify “recidivist and chronically noncomplying facilities whose violations have not been formally addressed by either the state or the EPA," as the agency put it in a 2008 report.

"The watch list is a snapshot of facilities that the EPA determines have not been subject to a state or federal enforcement action within 270 days, or nine months, of the discovery of a Clean Air Act violation. Between July and September, 81 facilities were removed from the list. The EPA fact sheet describes the list as a 'management tool used to facilitate discussion between EPA, state and local agencies on some enforcement matters' — though not necessarily a catalog of sites that pose the greatest risk to public health or the environment," iWatch reported.

Arizona sites on watch list

Vulcan Materials: Plants producing construction materials such as asphalt and ready-mixed concrete in El Mirage, Mesa and Phoenix. On the watch list in July and September.

CMC Steel: Metal fabricator in Mesa. On the watch list in July and September.

Quebecor: Printing plant in Phoenix. On the watch list in July and September.

Cemex: Cement plant in Glendale. On the watch list in July and September.

Freeport-McMoran: Copper smelter in Miami-Claypool and open-pit copper mine in Morenci. Both sites on the watch list in September.

High priority Clean Air Act violators in Az

About 1,600 polluters around the U.S. are classified by the EPA as “high priority violators” of the Clean Air Act — sites regulators believe need urgent attention. 26 sites are in Arizona:

Fisher Sand & Gravel, Phoenix: This gravel pit was fined $1 million in February 2010 for exceeding allowed carbon monoxide emissions. Though the EPA has addressed the violation,. the state has not issued an enforcement action with a compliance schedule.

Coronado Generating Plant, St. Johns: This coal-fired power plant owned by the Salt River Project was fined $950,000 in 2008 for exceeding sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions. The the power company is about halfway through a $500 million upgrade to remove the nitrogen, sulfur and other contaminants. Even before the upgrades, no health standard was ever violated in air tests near the plant, an SRP spokesman said.

CalPortland - Rillito Cement Plant, Marana: This cement plant was fined $350,000 for a plan that would have exceeded allowed emission of particulate matter. A spreadsheet in a permit application contained an error, sparking the violation. The plan was corrected, but the expansion is on hold pending economic recovery, a company spokesman said.

IMSAMET of Arizona, Goodyear: This aluminum recycler was fined $153,000 in 2009 for “failure to operate within the parameters established during their source test,” according to an EPA database. The company did not respond to a request for an interview, but EPA records show it is meeting its compliance schedule.

Summit Builders Construction Co., Phoenix: The construction firm was fined $105,610 in October 2010 for failure to control dust and dirt trackout from construction sites. The company is meeting its compliance schedule.

Henry Products, Phoenix: This maker of foam insulation was fined $87,500 for emitting penetane, an organic solvent, into the air. The company was also ordered to install equipment to prevent further releases at a cost of $130,723. The company is meeting its compliance schedule.

Lennar Communities Development, Tempe: This construction company was fined $38,425 in February 2010 for failure to control dust. The EPA has not taken enforcement action including a compliance schedule.

National Specialty Aggregates, Mesa: This brick and stone company was fined $33,307 for a Clean Air Act violation that is unspecified in EPA database. The company completed its plan and achieved in April 2011.

Sun Land Materials, Laveen: This sand and gravel pit was fined $30,000 in May for an unspecified particulate matter violation. Sun Land is meeting its compliance plan.

M.R. Tanner Mining, Glendale: This sand and gravel pit was fined $25,000 in January for an unspecified particulate matter violation. The company is meeting its compliance schedule.

Material Delivery, Glendale: This sand and gravel plant was fined $5,000 in June for a particulate matter violation. The EPA has not yet taken formal action including a compliance schedule.

CMC Steel Fabricators, Mesa: CMC was fined $2,200 in September 2009 for a reporting violation. The state has not issued a compliance schedule.

ASARCO Hayden Smelter, Hayden: The mining company is listed as a high-priority violator, though the EPA database contains no details. The company is meeting its compliance schedule.

AZ DOT, Bullhead City: This mini-storage company had high-priority asbestos violations at three sites. All are meeting their respective compliance schedules.

Barclay Group, Scottsdale: This real estate company was cited for a high-priority asbestos violation and is meeting its compliance schedule.

CEMEX, Mesa, Glendale: The EPA issued two notices of violation in September 2010 for this cement company, though to date the agency has not issued a compliance schedule.

Freeport-McMoran, Miami, Morenci: The EPA fined the mining company $250,721 for violating particulate matter emission standards. The issue was discovered in an inspection in May 2010 and corrected by June 2010 - four months before the EPA issued a notice of violation. Another Freeport-McMoran site in Morenci is listed a a high-priority violator for “undetermined” non-compliance since 2009.

IGER Bypass Trust, Phoenix: This company was cited for an asbestos violation and is meeting its compliance schedule.

Mesa Materials, Phoenix: This building materials company has one unspecified high-priority violation. The EPA compliance database lists no information about compliance.

Vulcan Materials, El Mirage, Mesa, Phoenix: This sand, gravel and asphalt company was cited at three sites for dust control. No compliance plan is in place.

Poisoned Places

TucsonSentinel.com reported on the Clean Air Act watch list with support from the Center for Public Integrity.

Read more about the "Poisoned Places" project, including reports and videos from CPI's iWatch News and NPR, and localized reporting by Investigate West and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

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